'If we'd won that Test we'd have taken the Ashes'

To this day I can't quite remember what Freddie Flintoff said as he stood over me at the end of the Edgbaston Test. I think it was something along the lines of "you were brilliant" and "bad luck mate", although I can't be sure. My mind was a blur of emotions after fighting so hard and then watching Michael Kasprowicz fall to a brilliant catch at the end. It was probably the most emotional moment of my 40-odd Test career.

But while I might not be able to remember the words we exchanged immediately after England had levelled with us at 1-1, I do know this. That moment with Andrew Flintoff at the end of the second Test really summed up the series for me. In what was a tense, hard-fought battle we came up just short against a team that, like us, displayed fantastic sportsmanship.

If we had won that Test, I know we would have gone on to take the Ashes home. As it was no one expected us to get as close as we did to victory given the way the match had gone for us to that point. But close we got and, if not for Flintoff, who is a truly superb athlete, we probably would have got there. It just wasn't to be.

In the two hours after the Edgbaston Test there were so many emotions - sadness, disappointment and others. There was a great feeling between the sides and it was nice to sit down after such a hard contest and have a beer with them. Maybe Steve Waugh was right about us demystifying ourselves by opening our doors and sharing a drink with the opposition after a Test but I'm not sure.

I suppose you can look at it two ways: you can argue we dropped our guard a little by doing it and letting them see that we're a good bunch of blokes, or you could say it was just good sportsmanship between two teams that had a lot of respect for each other. I do know that we treated England just like any other team in that, once the day was over and the doors were closed, we were back treating them like the opposition.

Since we've got home we've all heard a thousand reasons why we lost the Ashes. We've been blasted by the media - and rightly so in a lot of cases - and been asked "why?" more times than I can remember. Looking back I actually think it's quite simple: we weren't good enough. We were caught off guard by a fantastic England team and weren't allowed to play anywhere near our best.

In many ways it's been a good thing. It has helped us. We showed against the Rest of the World and the West Indies that we can bounce back. We changed, because we had to change. Our persona, our mannerisms, our approach - so many things have changed because of the lessons from the Ashes and there is a very different feeling about the team now. As time goes by I'm sure we'll come to appreciate how much we learned from that series.